Elections Canada has shared with DABC several resources which help ensure that all voters, including people with disabilities, have access to clear, accessible, and reliable information about voting in the upcoming federal election.

Download/view these resources below:

General Voting Information:

– Ways to register to vote in a federal election
– Have your ID ready to vote
– Have your ID ready to vote (details)
– Voter’s checklist
– Want to vote by mail
– Voting at your assigned polling station
– Get ready to vote
– How to find the list of candidates running in your riding
– Ways you can vote in the federal election

Accessibility Resources:

– Voting assistance tools and services on election day
– Folding the ballot
– Ballot
– Video: Accessible Polling Stations
– Video: Voting Assistance Tools and Services

You can also find a summary of key dates here: Elections Canada

The Vancouver Disability Solutions Network (VDSN) is a network of organizations committed to finding actionable solutions to problems faced by the disability community. Our goal is to create a community of voices, listen, and help implement change.

Every year we identify a major challenge encountered by the disability community and present our findings at a forum, where we develop actionable solutions that inform government policy, support reallocations of funding, and create a platform for establishing initiates.

With drastic changes in our environment becoming more prevalent, this year our focus is on how climate change affects people with disabilities.

This Year’s Forum Topic:
The Impacts of Climate Change on People with Disabilities

Our forum will be held on May 22nd, 2025 at Creekside Community Centre and will focus on the topic:

“How can we as community service organizations contribute to emergency planning, preparedness, and disaster relief for people with disabilities?”

The forum presentation and discussion will emphasize:

• improving communication between disability-serving organizations to make emergency planning more effective
• the importance of raising awareness about existing emergency resources
• including and listening to people with disabilities themselves with respect to challenges faced during climate-related emergencies and potential solutions

If you are interested in attending our forum, please register here.

Your Voice Matters!

We’d like to hear about the challenges you’ve faced and your experiences with emergency preparedness. Your responses will help guide discussions at our forum and improve emergency planning in Vancouver. Take the survey: https://forms.office.com/r/cJMWGjqDUh?origin=lprLink

Focus Groups

We are looking for individuals to participate in a focus group or interview (online or in-person) and offer an honorarium in exchange for your time. Please fill out the following form to participate!: https://forms.office.com/r/9s2k0rrCg3?origin=lprLink

The team at Health Justice have analyzed information received from a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the use of seclusion and restraint for people who are admitted to hospital against their will (“involuntarily admitted”) under the Mental Health Act. Some of what they found is:

• Data on seclusion and restraint was not reliably collected prior to 2020/2021
• The data that is collected is limited, and we are therefore missing valuable information about who experiences seclusion and restraint, how often, and for how long
• Despite those limitations, we know that at least 14,788 involuntary admissions from 2020-2022 included the use of restraint or seclusion and 1 in every 4 people who are involuntarily admitted experienced the use of restraint or seclusion

Here is a short excerpt of what the report says:

“We now know that at a minimum, about one quarter of all involuntary detentions involve the use of seclusion or restraint within the first three days of admission alone. With close to 30,000 Mental Health Act detentions in BC each year, the continued unregulated and unlimited use of this physical and structural violence is unacceptable. A culture without accountability is a shield for a system where treatment can be traumatic. BC’s Mental Health Act has permitted direction and discipline to take place out of sight and out of reach of any kind of recourse for over sixty years. It’s time for this extraordinarily invasive and harmful exercise of power to meet rigorous oversight and accountability.”

For the full report, see Health Justice’s blog post here: Seclusion and Restraints in BC: What we know and what we don’t — Health Justice.